


Put Your Dreams Away for Now

by iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Couch Cuddles, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mostly Gen, Post S03E01, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 19:25:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid/pseuds/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid
Summary: It's only been a week, and Ravi knows that aside from several days of soldier-brain-induced stoicism and one drunken afternoon with Clive, Liv hasn't really mourned.The craziness of this past week hasn't given her any chance to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> That episode did not give me enough Liv/Ravi interaction so I made it myself, also I'm a hurt/comfort oneshot addict. Major's tagged but he's only in it toward the end.
> 
> Title is from "Lost in my Mind" by The Head and the Heart.

Ravi has just about everything set up for his night with the house to himself: Xbox ready to go, a large pizza on the way, and absolutely no responsibilities that could pull him away from his game or otherwise make him feel guilty for wasting away his time into the early hours of the night. Laundry done, food shopping done, and the rats at the lab _just_ checked on only an hour ago.

Just him and some pizza and video games. No thinking about an impending zombie apocalypse, or about his best friend spending later and later nights with Stoll’s army of the undead (while completely disregarding the fact that he can't remain a zombie for much longer—Ravi won't think about that either), and definitely no thinking about amnesiac former teenager-killing zombies and a certain gunfire-filled night last week. Nope.

Zoning out with hours upon hours of mind-numbing video games is _exactly_ what the doctor ordered tonight.

He falls back onto the couch, controller in hand, and of course it’s at that precise moment that the doorbell rings. Ravi closes his eyes, lets out an annoyed sigh, and stands right back up.

Who would be at his door right now? He _just_ ordered the pizza not thirty seconds ago.

He first pushes aside the blinds from the window behind the couch to see who it is—the events from last week instilled a sort of niggling paranoia in him that he hasn’t quite been able to shake—and when he catches sight of Liv standing on the porch, he drops the controller and makes his way to the door.

_Please don’t be a case,_ he thinks. He was really looking forward to a quiet night in (and not to mention the dead child Clive knew is fairly high on the list of things Ravi doesn't want to think about tonight, too).

When he opens the door, though, he knows instantly that Liv isn’t here for work.

“What’s wrong?” he asks right away, already looking her over. She looks even smaller than usual, with her shoulders hunched, hugging her arms like she’s freezing to death in this seventy-degree weather, and she’s got that far-off look on her face like she can’t stop thinking about something awful.

She offers him what he sincerely hopes is not her best attempt at a smile, and she asks, “Are you busy?”

“Of course not.”

The sad smile gets just the tiniest bit more genuine, and she says, “Peyton’s out of town and I just… I didn’t want to be alone.”

He moves out of the doorway in a silent invitation, which she takes, pausing a few steps in and just standing there like she doesn’t know what to do. Ravi eyes her with concern, but he doesn't say anything and instead pulls out his phone and redials the same number he last called.

“Yes, hello, my name’s Ravi, I just ordered the large pizza?” he says. “Could you add an order of hot wings to that? The hottest you’ve got. Thanks.”

He tucks the phone back into his pocket and chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment as he thinks. The only thing he really knows is that Liv is upset. It could be about Wally or about what Stoll has apparently been calling “D-Day” or a whole host of other shitty things that have been taking the stage for what Ravi feels justified in calling the Worst Week Ever.

It could be a lot of different things, but he knows it's probably Drake. It's only been a week, and Ravi knows that aside from several days of soldier-brain-induced stoicism and one drunken afternoon with Clive, Liv hasn't really mourned.

The craziness of this past week hasn't given her any _chance_ to.

But he doesn't want to pressure her to talk about it. This is far from the first time that she’s lost someone so close to her—Ravi hates with every fiber of his being that he can say that, but it's true—and she can mourn however she sees fit.

Finally, he says, “Well, we’ve got two options.”

She looks at him, eyebrows raised, still looking impossibly sad, but she doesn’t say anything.

“We can either talk about it over pizza and incredibly hot hot wings,” he says, “ _or_ we can search the game cabinet for the scariest horror game I can find and take turns laughing at each other, while eating pizza and incredibly hot hot wings.”

He can tell it was the right thing to say; the tension just about leaves her shoulders, and she smiles at him. “Horror games, definitely.”

He says nothing about her deflecting, doesn’t even give a disappointed sigh. Instead he just waves her into the living room, saying, “Lady’s choice,” and smiling as she rolls her eyes and heads straight for the game cabinet.

They end up playing three different games of varying levels of scariness, and he manages to coax a few laughs out of her throughout the night by _slightly_ overacting his reactions to the jump scares. Both of them plow through the entire pizza within an hour, and Liv eats every single wing on the plate.

(Ravi, naturally, wonders whether this is the only thing she’s eaten all day. But he doesn’t ask.)

At one point he brings out the bottle of Fireball from the kitchen—because there’s only one thing in Ravi’s opinion that’s better at distracting people than video games and food, and that’s alcohol. He and Clive might differ on a lot of things, but that isn't one of them.

(And if it means letting Liv see how jump scares affect him even _more_ embarrassingly when he's buzzed, he supposes he can live with that.)

As she’s halfway through her plate of wings, he tries the tiniest bite of one, and though it’s quite a bit spicier than anything he would normally choose to eat, he exaggerates, covering his mouth with a fist and coughing for nearly a straight minute. He gets rewarded by the sound of Liv laughing the hardest she has all night, nearly spitting out her drink.

To Ravi it seems like it’s only been an hour or so when the plates are empty and the bottle of Fireball is nearly drained—Liv has _quite_ the alcohol tolerance in her condition, and he's not exactly a lightweight either—but when he looks at the clock above the TV he sees that it’s past midnight.

_Six hours_ , he thinks. Damn.

A few levels back she started leaning on his shoulder, and when he glances down at her to offer the controller for her next turn to play, he finds her fast asleep and softly snoring on his arm. Ravi smiles and gently leans back, guiding her along with him until they’re both lying back against the couch. She barely makes a sound, just sleepily murmurs something and shifts against him to get more comfortable.

Ravi settles in so that he’s comfortable, too, and prepares to spend another few hours letting her sleep on him while he plays his game.

… He’s gotten through three more checkpoints, just barely half an hour of gameplay, when Liv jolts awake.

There’s a sharp intake of breath, a hand that grabs his arm, and he can’t help but jump, already on edge from the horror game he's still playing. He pauses it and looks down at her, a complaint about her scaring him already halfway up his throat before he sees her wide eyes rimmed with tears. She’s facing him, but she’s staring off into the space just a bit in front of him, like she’s still stuck in whatever nightmare she’s just woken up from, her hand still tightly clutching his arm.

“... Liv?”

She looks up at him, like she’s only just noticing he’s here, and a beat of silence passes before she leans forward and wraps her arms around his neck. He drops the controller and hugs her around her middle.

“It’s alright,” he says, and he can hear her starting to cry. “Liv, it was just a nightmare. You're alright.”

He feels her shaking against him, and he tightens his grip on her.

“I was there again,” she says, her voice quiet and choked, and he doesn’t need to ask her where. She shudders and says, “I killed him again.”

Ravi sighs. “Liv…”

Something tells him that a lengthy explanation of why it _wasn’t_ her fault won’t do her any good. He can tell her that Drake was already gone when she found him, that his death amounted to him being a person with a disease who was forcibly cut off from treatment by the bastards at Max Rager, that she didn’t even pull him into the world of zombies in the first place—that his involvement was entirely his doing, working as an undercover police officer and accidentally stumbling into something that was far more dangerous than he could have ever predicted. He could reiterate Clive’s reminder that he would be dead if she hadn't done what she did.

Ravi could tell her all of this, but Liv is still half asleep, still probably considerably buzzed, and even his best pep talk wouldn't be likely to reach her in this state.

“Shh,” he says instead. “It’s alright. You’re not there, you’re right here with me.”

He tries not to think about how this isn’t the first time they’ve been in this position, her crying out her grief and clinging to him like he’s the only person left in the world. He tries not to think of Lowell, and of how this poor girl keeps losing everyone she loves, and of how if _he_ were in her position he’d be crumbling to pieces by now.

He's been doing a lot of that lately, he realizes. Trying not to think.

After a minute or so Liv sniffs and pulls slightly away from him, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. She sits fully back down on the couch and slumps against his side, winding her arms around his waist this time. Ravi gently runs his hand up and down her back, and he wordlessly drops his chin onto her head.

“I just… I can’t sleep anymore without thinking I’m back there,” she says even softer than before. "I’m back in that lab _every_ time. I thought it was PTSD from the soldier brain, but it didn't stop when the brain wore off.”

“Oh, Liv,” he says, stopping himself before he asks, _Why didn't you tell me?_ He thinks back to seeing her in the morgue the last few days and how she never really seemed all __there__. She kept zoning out every so often, and he stopped believing that they were random bits of visions after the third time she used that excuse. He wants to kick himself now for not doing anything about it. He chews on the inside of his cheek, thinking not for the first time that he wishes he could bring Vaughn du Clark back from the dead just to punch him squarely in the jaw. And then kill him, again, a second death by zombie horde. 

Ravi wouldn’t wish that on someone lightly.

“You haven’t been sleeping all week, have you?” he asks.

He feels her shake her head against him, and he sighs. “Well, you can sleep now. It’s okay.”

At first she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even move, just stays curled up against him, and Ravi begins to think that she really took his words to heart and fell asleep right then and there.

But then she sniffs.

“... Ravi?”

“Hmm?”

“I'm sorry I was such a bitch on soldier brain,” she murmurs into his shirt, and Ravi can't help but laugh at her quick subject change.

“Liv, really, I knew it was the brain, not you. You know I never blame you for that.”

She sniffs. “You should.”

He starts to object, but he decides rather quickly that it'll be pointless. “Well, apology accepted, then.”

“Thanks,” she says. In the silence that follows he can tell she wants to say something else by the way she seems to hold her breath, but she hesitates, like she isn’t sure whether to say it or not. Evidently she decides in favor, though, and she says, “Ravi…  You’ve saved my life too many times for me to count. You know that, right?”

Ravi smirks. “I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

She shakes her head again, and her voice is quiet and slurred with sleep when she says, “I just mean you don’t have to… you know, swoop in and save the day and be some big hero. Because you already are.”

That puts him at a loss for words for a moment, and there’s a peculiar feeling gripping tightly at his chest. He recovers quickly, though, and clears his throat.

“... Well now I _know_ you're exhausted.”

“I'm serious, Ravi,” she insists, though the grogginess in her voice undercuts her tone a bit. “I wouldn't still be here if it wasn't for you.”

He gulps down the lump in his throat.

“Thanks, Liv,” he says quietly, and in lieu of answering aloud she just nods, still curled up against him. They've been sitting like this a while now, and he glances down at her. “You _are_ exhausted, though. You need to sleep.”

She stiffens against him. “If I fall asleep I'll just end up back in that lab again.”

“Maybe. And then you’ll wake up,” he answers right away, “and you’ll find yourself safe and sound on my couch, right here with me."

Again she doesn't answer. He gives her a little squeeze with the arm still wrapped around her.

"It’s okay, Liv. You’ll be okay. You can sleep.”

Eventually she does.

She doesn’t say anything else, but she stays curled up against him, letting him lull her to sleep with his hand running up and down her back.

Once he hears her quietly snoring again, he pulls the blanket off the back of the couch and lays it over both of them. It takes a bit of skill to reach the remote without moving his torso and risk waking her, but he manages, and he turns the TV off. One dim lamp is still on, but it’s all the way on the other end of the room by the door, so he supposes it’ll have to stay.

As that thought crosses his mind he hears movement on the porch, and he shoots a suspicious stare toward the front door, which he is _positive_ he locked.

His mind goes through three very distinct phases: apprehension, relief when he hears a key in the lock and realizes it must be Major, and then apprehension again when he realizes that _shit_ , it’s _Major_ , and there is definitely some sort of rule against your best friend finding you practically cuddling with his ex-fiancée on your couch.

But Major is already in the door before Ravi can think of an explanation, and all he can think to do when Major looks at him is to put a finger over his lips and offer what he hopes comes across as an apologetic look.

Major pauses, looks first at him, then at Liv, then at the coffee table covered in paper towels and plates and a pizza box and a nearly empty bottle of Fireball, and then back at Ravi.

The look on his face isn’t angry, it's worried. Ravi almost feels guilty for expecting anything less.

Major mouths, _She okay?_

Ravi debates nodding, but instead he shrugs and waves his hand in a _so-so_ gesture.

Major smiles sadly, and he nods, reaching for the light switch by the door. Something in his face makes Ravi feel like it’s okay, like he hasn’t accidentally broken some sort of unspoken rule between them, like Major’s actually happy to see that someone was there for Liv when she needed it.

Maybe he’s projecting that last bit. But this is _Major,_ so Ravi’s inclined to think he sympathizes.

“Night, Rav,” Major whispers, just loud enough for him to hear, and he flicks off the light.

Now enveloped in darkness that his eyes aren’t yet accustomed to, Ravi blinks, listening to Major head up the stairs. He shifts a bit toward Liv so that she’s laying against his chest instead of his side, and he pulls the blanket up over his shoulder, linking his hands behind her back.

In the morning, he'll talk to her. In the morning, he'll get her to understand somehow that what happened to Drake wasn't her fault.

For now he settles in, leaning his head against the back of the couch, and gets ready to wake up tomorrow morning with the worst kink he’s ever had in his back and with Liv Moore safe and well-rested in his arms.

Not a bad trade-off, in Ravi’s opinion.


End file.
